Brown Eyes Susan

Okay, I haven't fully ID'ed the plant that I just dyed with. The common name is either black-eyed susans, or brown-eyed Susan, depending on which parent I'm talking to.  It's also right among some struggling purple coneflowers, and I don't remember if I planted yellow coneflowers there or not.  Regardless, it's either a Rudbeckia or and Echinacea, and we'll leave it at that for now.

I gathered the flowers way late at night, and gathered about 8 oz of flower heads. Plopped them into the trusty crock pot, poured water over it and let it go for about two hours on high.  I premordanted two mini skeins - one just about 2 oz, and one just a bit over 2 oz, so I was able to use my trusty formula of 2T alum to 1.5 tsp Cream of Tartar. I accidentally added more alum than I planned as I ran out of one jar and then found a second one, adding the stuff from the first jar and then about 1.5 T from the second. Techincally, I believe I added more than 2T. Such is life. The yarn doesn't seem worse the wear for it.


I added the wool to the simmering flowerheads, put the lid on and kept it on high for about 90 minutes. Went out, turned the crock pot off, and let everything sit.

Now, I was going into this expecting another yellows. Yellows seem to be a very common result.

I wasn't expecting a green, grey, browny color. I also expected the color to wash out, as has been my luck sometimes when getting a non-yellow color. No more than usual.

To further experiment, I took the second skein (unrinsed) and poured vinegar over half, and ammonia over the other half. The vinegar didn't do much, other than turn the vinegar purple. The ammonia greened up the yarn. Much more of a green-yellow, with very little of the grey cast.

An interesting experiment that I may have to do again.

Queen Anne's Lace

Okay, so I have a lot of Queen Anne's Lace growing in my yard. Last year, it embarrassed me; this year, it intrigued me.

I had read conflicting things about what part to use, so I went and cut about 9oz (maybe a little more) of flowers, with a tiny bit of stem. (Sepals attached as well.) To that I added tap water, and have been letting them sit for a while in the crock pot.  I have a three-ish oz hank of wool and a one-ish oz hank in the water, mordanting with 2T alum and 1.5 tsp C.o.T.

According to The Fold in Marengo, I should have finely chopped up the plant or put it in a blender. Instead I'm just going to leave it in the hot water for a while and see if that will extract enough color. Many of the sources said a 2:1 ratio of plant material to dry weight of goods. So, hopefully, I've done this correctly.

Why, one might ask, did I do a large skein and a smaller skein? I wanted to experiment with over dipping the dyed wool in amonia, so I thought a smaller skein would be nice to see the contrast. Both skeins are going through the mordanting and dye bath, so the colors should be relatively the same before the after-bath.

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Update:

I had the yarn in the hot dye bath for several hours, before turning it off and letting it sit overnight.  The color is a nice, bright, lemony butter yellow.  I rinsed the larger skeing, and the ammonia'd the smaller skein. Wasn't expecting anything too dramatic, but it did give it more of an orange tint, closer to tumeric in color.

Next year, I want to try an iron after bath. Rumor has it, that would give me more of a grey-green.